Papers Please: Real ID passes

The Real ID act has passed the Senate unopposed, and it waits for the …

As a followup to this post on the execrable Real ID Act of 2005, I feel obligated to let you know that the inevitable has indeed happened, and Real ID has passed. We all knew it would, because it was attached to an emergency military appropriations bill that had to pass. If you've checked out the links in my previous post and you want to read another summary of what's wrong with this bill, Bruce Schneier has a nice post that breaks it down for you.

So now we'll have a nice, centralized national database with your name, home address, and other personal data for identity thieves to target. And the great thing about hitting a data motherlode like that—at least from a pirate's point of view—is that once your personal info is out there on the 'Net for sale all the cops in the world can't round it up and put it back in its place. Now is the time to learn how to check your credit report at least annually. The painful irony here is that, in making it easier for black hats to get their hands on your identity, the government has made it easier for terrorists to impersonate law-abiding citizens. We'll all be that much less safe in the name of security. Truly, your tax dollars at work.

So what's to be done? In the short-term I have no idea. I personally am thinking about faxing a photo of my bare backside to James Sensenbrenner's (R-Wisc.) office with the caption "Identify This!" on it, but I doubt it would do any good. The long-term answer is to punish those responsible by exercising your right to vote. Mid-term elections are coming up in 2006, and I plan to make my dissatisfaction with Real ID known at that ballot box. In a democracy, this kind of thing only happens to us if we let it.